From Amy - Sat. April 4th

Greetings from the Beagle Channel.
Log date April 4, 2015

We continue to have a great time. Very beautiful here, but it is colder than expected and SNOWS every day!! Each morning when we awake we exclaim MERRY CHRISTMAS, for that's how picture-perfect it looks with the snow on the trees and ice on the water. Yesterday afternoon we marveled at the largest snowflakes anyone has ever seen, catching them on our tongues.

For those of you who read the April 1 blog, consider the date of that posting. But the general description (with the exception of the Argentinian rogues) was accurate.

We've visited some beautiful glaciers and watched one calve big chunks with a tremendous ROAR. Very impressive even at a quarter of a mile distance. Today we visited with a few groups of sea lions hanging out on rocky shore ledges, finishing their moult before heading back to sea. Some pups looked very small for this time of year--we hope they make it but nature knows best. They all bark and yap at the boat and adult scouts swim out to check the boat, but from a distance. They are cautious.

At last night's anchorage, the dolphins were especially playful and came to the boat to play when they heard the engine. The shore crew went for a spin with them leaping and diving around the Zodiac before the shore crew rigged the shore lines (we anchor and set shore lines off the stern and sometimes the bow to secure the boat at night).

We have a crab trap and over the past week have figured good places as well as not-so-good places to set it. Best location: sandy bottom, not too deep. Best bait: fish bones, fish skin, lamb remains (uncooked). The Centaurum crabs are a superior savory treat, but require dedication to extract the meat. There are some really creepy invasive species crabs that we caught one day due to the wrong choice of bait--like out of a science fiction movie. Gross. They are indigenous to the Baltic Sea and the NE Atlantic and most likely got down here by hanging onto ships as stowaways. Yech.

We are set to round the Cape on Thursday if the weather holds; the navigators are watching the gribs each day and contemplating the options. If we can land on the Horn that would be really fun but we won't know until we get there if that's possible. We're making our way toward it over the next few days, winding through the Channel and its islands.

We're due to fly out of Puerto Williams on Saturday morning but LAN Airlines is notorious for overbooking, leaving early, etc. So we'll see. In the meantime we appreciate this beautiful country in the company of good friends and family. We are eating like royalty: tonight Paige and Will are making angelhair pasta with today's fresh crab haul. Life is good and we are grateful.